ACE Online I-Gear War Weapons Guide By: Hurdurderp

Right, so I’ve finally got some free time to write this up… and here I am. This guide was written in September of 2011, and may not be up to date if you’re reading this at some other time. All pictures from other people are taken w/o permission because I’m an *******. This is written from the prospective of a sco player, so bare that in mind. So I’ve played I-Gear from when it was horridly broken, to the somewhat balanced state it’s in now. This guide is ONLY about MAKEING WAR weapons, NOT using them, NOT grind weapons, and NOT to fly an I-Gear, or how to obtain funds to make these weapons. Those are only things that can be learned though practice and experience. I also assume you understand the basics of I-Gear, and that the max enchant is e12, because e13 costs too much for sane people.

This is an I-Gear ONLY guide; other gears should not reference this for anything. When I say ‘prob’, I’m talking about what’s currently called Accuracy, ‘prob’ is derived from Probability; the original name before it was changed to Accuracy. Everything else is self explanatory. I-Gears are so dependent on advanced weapons (missiles) that I can cover the entire standard weapons part in a single line phrase: get a full reattack Lighting Viper or a reattack Volcanic Ash or stick with the beginner weapons.

I won’t be doing all the physics work required to explain the missile dynamics and damage calculations, because 99% of the people wouldn’t understand or care anyways. Go ask GM Saccharide if you want the graphs and stuff.

Introduction

Over the many years this game has been played, there have been many horrible tragedies of wasted potential, and many incidents of incredible amounts of down syndrome producing weapons with so much money (USD money), yet somehow, they still manage to make terrible weapons. Besides that, nobody has actually written a guide on how to make a real weapon.

I-Gears are currently the 2nd most weapon dependent gear, behind the A-Gear. Unlike the A-Gear that only uses the Asteroid Cluster and that’s the end of all their choices, I-Gears have a diverse range of weapons to be that can be used and made in many different ways, which is a double edged sword as I-Gears need multiple weapons. This brings me to be first point, and two that I should point with red colour: YOU CANNOT MAKE A UNIVERSAL WEAPON THAT IS GOOD FOR EVERYTHING. IT WILL ONLY END UP BEING BAD FOR EVERTHING.

WEAPONS WITH STATS EVERYWHERE WITHOUT A PURPOSE ARE WOTHLESS

If you cannot comprehend this, please immediately stop reading and jump off a building.

the only aspect of the I-Gear itself is the skill, Frenzy. Frenzy adds 3 things, basic damage, valid angle, and most importantly; +1 Volleys fired at level 38+.

Weapons in this game fire in a pattern, usually noted right after the attack power in the format (X*Z). X is volleys fired, or number of round the missile is fired per click, and Y is misses fired every click. this means that a weapon with (1*Z) will have the largest damage increase, and (1*Z) weapons are the ONLY weapons igears use.

valid angle is how easy the weapon is to lock.

as brief as this may be, this is all you need to know, and all thats all i’m going to talk about on the subject of igear itself.

Weapon Types: Instruo pro Bellum

There are currently 3 types of weapons, Regular, Unique, and Legend.

Regular weapons are shown with white text when clean, green when fixed, and orange when enchanted.

Unique weapons are weapons in yellow, and are locked from any modifications. Typically found as the beginner weapons these days, the only useful one would be Ace Arrows.

Legend weapons are created from regular weapons with an item called a Gematria Scripture, and can be upgraded by combining it with a Soul of Laplace (referred too commonly as scripts and sols). Legend Weapons are depicted with purple.

Gambling, Enchanting, and Legending of Weapons: Ausus Eventus

Gambling is the first thing most players are introduced too… oh the irony. Prefixes and suffixes are generally referred to as fixes, and generally sorted into 3 groups. Trash/regular, super gambles, and hyperfixes. Trash and regular fixes are more or less all worthless, and obtained though either drops or regular gamble cards. Supergamble fixes come from supergamble cards (and at a low chance regular cards), obtained though making them w/ mats or cash shop. Hyperfixes are in general completely overpowered fixes that make weapons insanely overpowered; though, they are normally split into 4 catagories: trash hyperfixes have the stat values of about 1.1~1.8 times the value of a regular super gamble. ‘Normal’ usually is abound 2~2.5 of the value of a regular supergamble. ‘High tier’ generally means around 3 regular super gambles. Then there’s a certain amount of fixes so overpowered, the developers removed them from being gambled with supergamble cards. Instead, at a undisclosed rate (general consensus is 0.01%), these fixes with over 3.5 times the amount of stats in a regular super gamble come ONLY though regular gamble cards, and drops.

Enchanting is simple, you take a card either found or bought from a shop, put it and a compatible weapon into the laboratory, and press ok. The sadistic part is that this process is only safe up till 5 enchants, as they are 99.99% safe (yes weapons have been lost before), and after, as a general rule, they lose 10% chance of successes for every level until they become 1%. So going from e5->e6 would be a 90% success rate, and e9->e10 would be 50%. When an enchant fails, the weapon BREAKS. Meaning it’s gone. Goodbye. enchants are refereed to by the format of e(x)(y). so e1 attack would mean enchant 1 on attack, and e13 pierce would mean enchant 13 on pierce.

If you wish to protect your weapons, enchant protect cards are available from the cashshop to protect it and revert to enchant 5 whenever they fail, as well as hyper-enchant cards that revert the weapon back to 10 when it fails. Note that hyper-enchants are EXTREMELY expensive, but that’s because everything past enchant 10 can use hyper enchant cards. There are also +15% probability cards available in the warpoint shop for 2k warpoints a pop.

Hyper enchant cards are cards with a higher spec then the regular kind, but can only be used after enchant 10. These are extremely important, as I-Gear war weapons tend to have 5/6 enchants in speed rather than stats, and these hyper enchants can add huge bonuses in a single card. However, the breaking rate for enchants past 10 are very high, and so thus, a double edged sword. Greedy people can lose hundreds of millions of spi because they got greedy and went for enchant 13.

Legending weapons is far more dangers then using enchants, as you cannot protect your weapons while doing so. The process works by combining a script with a weapon, the weapon is now LOCKED. Meaning you CANNOT change fixes, or add enchants. The ONLY way to improve the weapon is by upgrading with a sol. The rate of success going legend is generally the same level of the weapon, and the weapon resets back to level 30. As you add sols, the rate of success decreases like in enchanting by 10% per level, and when it breaks its gone. Generally, most people don’t go past level 40 legend (baal) and it would generally do as much damage as a normal weapon variable in a low 70’s level variation. The benefits are increased probability and increased base speed to the weapon.

It is NOT recommended that the legend system be used for I-Gear war weapons anymore because with the advent of armor fixes, you can compensate the lost prob with your armor. The bonus given is no longer worth the risk or the damage lost from legending. (Will be discussed in great detail further down in the ‘sparrow’ section)

The 4 basic modifier stats used by I-Gears are attack, pierce, accuracy, and reattack.

Attack, also referred to as minmax, is simple to explain, it increases attack. The more attack, the more damage. The mathematics of it all doesn’t really matter except that more is more. Attack is a direct increase in damage dealt, based on the base damage of the weapon, and it’s a linear equation.

Pierce is the direct counter to defense, and directly defines the percentage of damage dealt. A gear with 100% pierce attacking a gear with 50% defense will see 50% of its damage come though, while a gear with 50% pierce attacking a gear with 100% defense will see only ‘1’. The minimum amount of defense a gear can have is 0%, and thus you cannot have an amplifying effect form pierce calculations. Pierce’s effectiveness is a logarithmic in nature, as people only have a limited amount defense to pierce normally.

Accuracy, also known as probability/prob, is a direct counter to evasion. A gear with 100% prob attacking a gear with 50% evasion will hit 50% of the time, and a gear with 50% prob attacking a gear with 100% evasion will see only ‘miss’. Prob’s effectiveness is logarithmic in nature, as people have a limited amount of evasion to counter.

Reattack, is the most complicated for the 4. In a purely theoretical DPS outlook, the exponential increase in the reattack level of approaching and greater than 90% increases at insane amount per percentage point due to the exponential nature of reattack. Numbers at that range are possible while using berserker and e13/14 reattack weapons. Even though the theoretical implications at the reattack value of 0 is equivalent to attempting to divide by zero, while the factual reality of the situation though experimentation showed that weapons either fire all at once, or don’t fire at all. In a weapon within the limits of what would be considered normal, unlike the other 3 types of modifiers, the exact percentile is more or less irrelevant. As long as you can fire more missiles at the enemy in the same timeframe during a dogfight, it’s a reattack weapon.

Missile Speed is also a core mechanic, and is discussed after the missiles in detail.

Weapons and Weapons, alas, Weapons for all: “Alea iacta est”

I will ONLY be talking about weapons you could potentially use, not the obsolete (edrills) and irrelevant ones (tongs/MS/hawks). Currently there are 2 easily obtainable weapon types for I-Gears, 2 hard and 2 event only, and 1 Infinity Field Weapon. These are all the weapons that have any sort of use for an I-Gear, and I will discuss each one of them in detail; in the order as listed.

Easy to obtain: (because they drop from mobs) Arrows

Hammerheads

Infinity Field weapon: Invading Force (drops of IF1, Equivalent to level 65 legend edrills and referred to as IF’s)

Hard to obtain: (comes from slot machines, version can’t be upgraded) Kerthions/Holytritons (both referred to form this point onwards as Kerth’s)

Hades/Erida (both referred to as Erida from this point onwards)

Event Only: (Exception w/ Insanity Edrils is if you can find a seller for ‘Mad Clues’) Event Arrows (There are currently 3 variations of event weapons, differing about 1% in stats at the final version, being xmas arrows and crystal arrows, all being level 50 legend equivalent of arrows)

Insanity Edrills (referred to as IE’s from this point onwards)

Missile Vector and Velocity Dynamics: Volatus quod Motus

Speed is everything the I-Gear is, from its survivability to its killing ability. Understanding how speed, turning, and acceleration change the vectors of missiles behind you is key to outturning things. But that’s not what this guide is about, this is about weapon speed, and weapon speed alone. Before you get into the specific weapons, you must understand the key to the everything is speed.

There are 2 motion mechanics found in missiles: the rate of induction (defined in degrees/second) and the missile velocity (defined in meters/second). Simplified, the induction is how fast something turns and the velocity is how fast the missile moves.

Weapon speed is a very fragile mechanic, a 5% too little and the weapon is useless, 5% too much and the weapon is also useless. The missiles always attempt to point towards the target and the faster the movement, the harder it becomes for the missile to turn. This results of fighting a gear that knows how to turn is the missile loop, where the gear is turning so fast, that the speed of the missile works in favor of the enemy pushing it away from the gear and into an endless spin. The higher the induction of a weapon, the higher speed it can accommodate; and as a result lower speed weapons at the same induction turn faster.

high speed weapons have the distinct advantage of ppl not being able to just feather away, typically edrill/IF classed weapons (with the exception of IEs), and typically prob based and almost made exclusively for anti-igear. The main disadvantage is that they can be EASILY terrained and outturned; assuming the enemy is competent.

this leads to the very high speed chasing weapons, typically made as joke weapons, always edrills, and normally venture into this territory of e7~8+ depending on the situation. basically, they’re moving so fast, that it takes ages for the missile vector to change, and you wouldn’t even be able hit jack****. You’ve also wasted card slots that could have been used on stats, making the missiles hit like pillows even if they connect.

On the flip side are the high-mid speed weapons, almost always entirely represented as e5/e6 speed sparrows. Rarely made as cash shop weapons because there’s just no point (i wouldn’t say cash shop weapons are totally useless, but for overall weapons they are) typically anti-bgear and low-eva exclusive, and at most mid-high evasion I-Gears with the use e11/12 and hyperfixes. Sparrows are good. Very good. There’s a reason why almost all I-Gears consider it a staple weapon. They do high damage, and catch 90% of gears, have a high valid angle (so its resalable to M-Gears), and still turn well due to the relatively low speed. The downside is they MUST be full prob, even more so in the case of non-leg sparrows.

However, when you go even lower speed, you encounter the hammerhead ****-teir grind weapons. Speeding them is essentially pointless cause they’re slow as ****, they don’t do much damage, they don’t have enough prob, and not even that good for grinding because you have to legend them to make it worth it.

This specific speeds required for every weapon is further down in each weapon specific section.

Arrows and Sparrows: Incendia Adveho Nex

Speeded arrows, commonly referred to as Sparrows, are bluntly the key staple weapon of every single I-Gear. Or at least they should be. Sparrows hit hard, and they hit fast. The main advantage of the arrow is the base damage, the highest for I-Gears in the game. End game double minmaprob hyperfixed speeded non-legend sparrows are how I-Gears break the 1000 damage per missile barrier. The thing is, this can never happen with any other realistic weapon: no matter how much minmax you put on something, you cannot replace the base damage the minmax is based on. The main disadvantage is the low 75% prob, and the 420 speed requires you to go e6 or e7 speed depending on personal preference. E5 speed however, is too slow to catch even bgears. In a perfect world, you’d want even more speed, but at above the 600 m/s mark arrows don’t turn very well, so e7 is the maximum. This means that you’ve locked up most of the regular enchant slots with speed, and it really required commitment into the hyperslots to make it really shine. But it’s also the reason why double hyperfixed minmaxprob e12 arrows are by far the most broken weapons an I-Gear can ever get. Arrows are your typical anti-bgear and anti-low-evasion-igear weapons. Mid evasion is also a possibility if you have access to e12 and doublehyperfixes.

The following is a sparrow from AR on one of the more notable players, Sonblade.

Story on that is both fixes were first tries. What is notable about this is that it is the near perfect achievable idea on a sparrow. If you want a god-tier sparrow, many people would happily take a carbon copy of this. Now the reason I even posted a screenshot is this: this is e7 speed; and that would be debatable our servers. However, on helix, a large majority of the gears there are survival build, so the extra speed is NEEDED. Please build your sparrow’s speed to the environment, not by some guide. Think for yourselves, this is just a reference for new players. This is really more relevant for sparrows than any other weapons.

That being the picture perfect arrow (any myself having something similar), I had to steal somebody else’s arrow to screenshot.

This is the “White middle class 30 year old straight married male 2.1 children making about 50k a year” type of arrow.

Without armor fixes, this really wouldn’t be a viable arrow. However, because we have armor fixes, you can gain up to 20% prob on armor, and all you need is 10% prob on the armor and you can hit 140% prob self buffed on that arrow. Arrows were never meant to take out evasion I-Gears, they were meant for B-Gears: And this, rapes B-Gears. Non-legend sparrows MUST be full prob. There is no leeway in this rule unless you aim for hyperfixes, and even then, minmaxprob is better then ra-prob on non-legend arrows.

Legending of arrows to gain even more prob and speed is still obviously viable, the gains are visibly there and you’ll benefit in every way: but to many it’s not worth the risk of breaking the weapon. is 10% prob and 1 enchant less of speed really worth a chance in breaking the weapon? to me, no; its not. You also lose the 1k damage potential till you hit at least level 50 legend.

Summery: Sparrows make the main weapon of 90% of the I-Gear population, and for good reason. Minmaxprob hyperfixes are preferred because of the base damage, and because minmaxprob hyperfixes have a can have larger base prob them when compared with obtainable ra-prob hyperfixes, and allow the breaking of the 1k per missile barrier. Legend sparrows are obviously better, but the risk that resides in that system isn’t worth the rewards. Sparrows run normally e5 speed if legend, e6 or e7 speed if non legend. Note: until you’ve tried hiting 1000+ on every single arrow, you have no idea how good it feels.

Incendia Adveho Nex: Pierce Specialization

Another interesting application of arrows would be a full pierce anti-mgear arrow. It wouldn’t be very good for anything else, but it’d tear a hole in the side of any M-Gear. speed is not required on anti-mgear weapons as they’re slow as ****.

The last application of arrows would be a pierce sparrow, typically an anti-def-bgear, and more of less impossible to obtain w/o hundreds of millions or cash shop. they way non-legend pierce sparrows are built are almost static: without puting stats all over the places, the weapon would be utterly useless. The only thing that would be debatable is an extra speed enchant. Without the speed, the weapon is useless. Without the prob, the weapon won’t hit anything. Without the pierce, its not going to negate defence.

Summery: Pierce specialization should ONLY be done on arrows, due to the high base damage. They way they are built are quite static, and theres not much room for debate. In an idea world, a pierce sparrow should be made out from a event arrow, and is discussed in the event arrow section. Full pierce wepaons run as non-speeded, while pierce sparrows run at e5 or e6 speed.

Legend Hammerheads: useless enough that I won’t even try to add Latin

Non-legend hammerheads are worthless, so ill deal with just legend ones. For a gigantic chance of breaking getting to level 50 legend, compared to a u-2, you get 25% prob and 13% less base damage. Note that the speed on these makes them not suitable for specialized anti-igear weapons, so they’ll fit in the same role as sparrows… when sparrows already hit the prob required to be viable. So that extra prob is pointless, and you’ve lost the damage that can never be recovered. And bringing them to serpin will probably break the weapon; so they obviously cannon compete with arrows for the title of main war weapon.

However, it does open up another possibility: RA based weapons. With the high prob, fixes can be moved to reattack instead of prob and you’d have a RA war weapon. I wouldn’t recommend it though, as kerth’s and IFs fill in that role better.

Summery: hammerheads are terrible and useless for war.

The Invading Force: Pervasor Vis

IF’s are the total and final replacement for the entire edrill class of weapons, excluding IEs, because IFs are in essence level 65 legend edrills that can be fixed and enchanted, and thus have completely eliminated the need for normal edrills. IFs are easily obtained from players for medium amounts of spi, or dropped by the final boss in IF1.

IFs are made into 4 types of weapons: full speeded prob, double minmax prob hyperfixed, double ra prob hyperfixed. And full RA, even though it’s not the most efficient use of IFs.

In an ideal world, IFs should be created EXCLUSIVELY for high speed anti-high evasion igear weapons; however they can also work as full ra non-speeded anti-bgears weapons as well because they are fast enough to put pressure on the bgear while having a large enough ra that the said bgear cannot just turn around. The main issues with IFs are generally designed with 560 engine igears in mind, and it turns them into chasseing only weapons that can be easily outturned. Speedprob IFs are not idea for general warring, but are extremely efficient at taking out evasion igears though brute force amounts of speed and accuracy. A problem inherent with this is the IFs is that it CAN be outkitted, making them not very useful for regular wars but therefore allows for a very niche segment for kerths to hold (discussed below)

(For the hyperfixed full prob, imagine extra stats on either ra or minmax.)

Summery: IFs are anti-igear weapons, but can be used against some bgears. e5 speed for full prob anti-igear, and non-speeded for full ra weapons. INVADEING FORCES CANNOT BE USED FOR PIERCE WEAPONS. NO **** YOU. The base damage is too low for it to be effective. however, an intresting thing to note is that because these are still relatively high damage, minmax fixes do have an effect still, even though this is generally seen though hyperfixes

A Theoretical approach to Kertherions/Holytritions, and Hades/Erida based weapons: Occultus Speculum

Now, one of the reasons high-evasion 560 engines are able to kit off IFs is because of the reattack, the 1.8 seconds between volleys gives them enough time to kit it off, and even with ra, the base damage is low so there is a ceiling on the damage. This opens up a very tiny area where ra-prob based double hyperfixed speeded kerth’s COULD shine. Kerths attempt to take a place between edrills and arrows, with a focus on the low reattack of 1.6s, 90% base prob and a speed at 470, ideally build into e6speed e4 ra e2 hyperprob w/ double ra-prob hyperfixes. Weapons like these combined with an ose of ose type armor should easily hit 170%+ prob, and have enough ra and base damage that when combined w/ mgear buffs, cannot be merely kitted off. Kerth’s are the idealization of a weapon that hits a medium/light amount of damage, but is delivered precisely and rapidly. The downside is they would be not very effective against anything besides evasion I-Gears, as kerth’s are super specialized, and should be treated as such.

Summery: Kerths super specialized theoretical (at this point) weapons, and thus i can only comment though experience. however, this experience is saying they could have great potential. i’d probably recommend e6 speed for these in the double hyperfixed setting, but no more. KERTHS, IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM, CAN BE USED FOR PIERCE WEAPONS.

(This kerth is extremely theoretical, please take that into account)

Erida’s on the other hand are the mirror opposite ideal. Hit hard, hit with a ton of speed, and hit alote; even though not alote are going to hit and the time delay is quite large. Unlike kerths, these have no specialized stats like the 1.6 base ra. Eridas, when compared to arrows, lose overall and base damage, in exchange for speed. any attempt to justify using eridas over arrows is null and void, as speed can be compensated for, base damage cannot. Compared to IFs, they lose 25% prob and thus cannot be used as anti-igear weapons; end of story.

Summery: Eridas are terrible, and useless in every aspect. other weapons can do every job better.

Pictures aren’t available because I haven’t heard nor seen a theoretical double ra-prob hyperfixed kerth, and eridas are generally useless, nor can I create it in acecalcs. However, if you were to look at fixes and enchants alone, this represents it would look like this at the best even creditwhores can get for the theoretical kerth

Event Arrows and Sparrows: Inconcessus Fructus

Event arrows, in their final version, replace regular arrows almost completely except in the area of arrow kales and forces for the most broken weapons. The most prominent area where they are found, are things usually reserved for theory only because of factors like the legend system. This produces things like hyper specialized anti-defence-bgear weapons, as shown below.

Because of the 10% base prob increase, you can put the hyper slots into pierce instead of prob, producing 8% more pierce and begin to push into the territory where you can hunt mgears w/ speeded weapons. The weapon above is only e11 because i’m cheap, so yah.

The problem is that you can’t get them outside of events, and they are non-tradable and therefore cannot be obtained.

Summery: awesome and can replace regular arrows, and can be treated as serpin arrows, so e5 speed will do just fine. can be built like any arrow you want, except with 1 less speed card. but what’s the point if you can’t get one?

Insanity Edrills: Inconcessus Insania

IEs are a funny weapon, as they fire at 1×6, and with 2va, this means they can only be used by igears. This means that they do more damage than any other weapon igears can use, BUT they sacrifice alote to obtain this, as they CANNOT be used for chasseing, as the travel time was shorted to such an extent, that shooting at anything other than what can be point blank range is pointless, and they CANNOT be used for a dogfighting weapon as they are outturned, and once outturned, they do NOT have enough distance to loop back for another try.

This puts them into a funny position: IEs are ganking weapons. That means built as full RA, run up to somebody when they’re not paying attention, and unload tons of missiles.

War IEs are built as full RA, in my opinion. However, IEs are a funny missile, and people have different opinions about them depending on their on playstyle. There are many different ways to make IEs, and you’ll just have to do research into them; because I honestly don’t like IEs for war, but that’s just me.

Summery: hard to summarize, but most people I see use as full ra. Most people don’t have enough exposure to them to pass judgement, nor do i see them used alote in wars. Buy madclues from people at a chance to get IEs, not many people have these. Like event arrows, what’s the point if you can’t get one?

These are my own, just as a reference to an ingame screenshot. Obviously unfinished, and will never be finished.

Conclusion:

STOP MAKING STUPID WORTHLESS WEAPONS. No seriously. Stop it.

I-Gs need multiple weapons dependent on their own playstyle, go find out what type works best for you.

List of things not discuses at all or in detail in the guide 1. all the math and physics related to the missile vector dynamics. 2. all the math related to reattack, and inherently, zerking weapons. 3. obsolete and pointless weapons like regular/legend edrills, tongs, SNs, bawwos. 4. standard weapons 5. how to actually use these weapons, ie. flying igears 6. anything related to flying igears

if anybody wants to take this and finish a full igear guide, be my guest.

Generalized Non-Specialized Weapons Tier list: Amphitheatrum Flavium

Weapon class ‘tiers’ and listed best to worst overall, w/ only realistic weapons. Subjective list based on value and cost geared towards I-Gears, for main war weapons. Super specialized only weapons like pierce arrows or zerking weapons cannot be compared to this. I also avoided IEs due to the fact i’ve never really seen all the possibilities on them before in war. Sparrows means both regular, event, and legend. all weapons are assumed to be in the 8x-9x range, or serpin minimum for legend weapons and event arrows ALWAYS refer to event arrow ver. final

This is a generalized list, stuff inbetween is ranked about inbetween and I may be missing a few classes, but it’s good enough that most people get the general idea